Art for Peace

Penang Puppet Festival (PPF) returns from 12–23 August 2026 with its third edition, BERBUNGA (生花), celebrating puppetry as a living tradition that continues to grow, adapt and inspire across generations. The festival opens with a historic gathering of representatives from five regions where Hokkien glove puppetry (POTEHI) continues to flourish—Penang, Jakarta, Singapore, Taipei and Zhangzhou (Fujian)—marking the first time these living traditions come together in Southeast Asia. Over 12 days, audiences can experience performances, exhibitions, artist talks, workshops, forums and community programmes featuring diverse forms of puppetry, including POTEHI, Teochew iron-rod puppetry, Wayang Kulit Kelantan, contemporary puppetry and shadow theatre. More than a celebration of performance, PPF 2026 creates a platform for intercultural dialogue, artistic exchange and heritage transmission, inviting audiences to discover how traditional puppetry continues to bloom in the contemporary world.

In conjunction with George Town Festival, Mano Plus Penang presents a thoughtful pop-up display in collaboration with notime towaste and .bungkus. As a curated Select Store, Mano Plus continues to champion local brands, makers, and creative voices that reflect the best of what Malaysia has to offer; selections that are thoughtful, purposeful, and rooted in contemporary culture. With this pop up, explore how soft plastic and textile waste can be transformed into meaningful think pieces as they take many forms that can inhabit our daily lives. notime towaste is not just a design lab, but a living atelier shaped by consciousness, restraint, and intention; a design philosophy exploring how we might live with greater awareness and less excess. Having launched .bungkus as a creative means to work with a commonly discarded material, plastic bags. View the latest collection of bags, accessories and furniture that hope to become drivers for habitual change. Concurrently, peer into the lab’s exploration of textile wastes; another disregarded waste material that deserves a serious introspection of how we value, produce and ultimately discard.